This invention relates generally to refrigerators and more particularly, to a refrigerator door beverage storage module.
Some known refrigeration appliances, including refrigerators and freezers, typically include a cabinet housing including an outer case and one or more inner liners therein that defines a refrigeration compartment, such as a fresh food compartment and a freezer compartment for storing food and beverage items. Typically the fresh food compartment and freezer compartments are closed by separate access doors hingedly attached to the case. A number of storage shelves, bins, and drawers are employed in the fresh food compartment and the freezer compartment to organize food.
Furthermore, storage shelves and bins are often integrated into the refrigerator access doors for storage of food and beverage items. Thus, for example, condiments and bottles may be stored in the fresh food compartment door, and frozen juice concentrates and frozen vegetables may be stored in the freezer compartment door. As such, the items in the door storage shelves and bins are accessible apart from the fresh food and freezer compartments when the doors are opened yet located in the refrigeration compartments when the doors are closed.
In some types of side-by-side refrigerators, multiple storage shelves and bins are integrated in a horizontally stacked orientation relative to one another. The size of the shelves and the spacing between them, however, can be restrictive for loading and unloading items to and from the storage bins. Larger items and/or oddly shaped items, such as a 2-litre bottle, are therefore some times difficult to load and unload from the storage door shelves, and several manipulations of the items may be made to fit items into and remove the items from the storage door. For example, taller items, such as wine bottles, interfere with storage shelves above them and are tilted about their lower ends to fit them into door storage bins and then rotated back to a level position in the bins. Placing these items horizontally may reduce the interference and utilized previously unused space. Smaller items, such as beverage cans, may not be loaded or unloaded with one smooth movement either, but rather are positioned in the door storage shelves with both a horizontal movement and a vertical movement. Loading multiple smaller items would require stacking or positioning that may lead to the items becoming dislodged when the access doors are opened and closed. Still further, access door storage shelves can be difficult to clean.
The aforementioned difficulties are more pronounced when shelves and bins are located in lower portions of the door where they are neither easily reached nor in a clear line of sight for the user.